About 1870, fertile farmland and plentiful timber drew settlers to this part of Denton County, where a community first called Toll Town grew up at the intersection of two roads. Schoolteacher Henry Clay Wilmoth suggested renaming it Green Valley. A post office opened in 1874, and by 1878 the first recorded subscription school for Green Valley children met in a vacant farmhouse while the community also had several stores and a blacksmith shop. Although the Texas and Pacific Railroad bypassed the community in 1881 and caused it to lose residents and businesses, the Green Valley public school district was organized as District No. 20 in 1884. Local carpenters Sam Gross and James Mays built a one-room schoolhouse, where Lutie Whayne taught as the first teacher. After that building burned in 1894, a replacement was built the same year about one-half mile north of the first site. In 1919, a third school, a new four-room building, opened for students. In 1935 the district offered only first through ninth grades, so students went to Denton to finish their education. When Green Valley School closed in 1949, Florence Habern was the last teacher. Over several generations, the school provided academic and athletic opportunities for students in this rural area, and the 1919 building remains in use as a community center.